King of the World #11: Darius I

[huerfanista]

Ashoka only has 2 cities near Neal, both of which are food and production poor and cut off from the Romans so Indian knights are not going to be an issue, as for Qin he dosent even have machinery right now so no chokonus, by the time he gets them to the front line Neal's Indian cities should be out of revolt and producing longbows

If you think that Neal can afford to go after Ashoka right now, I suggest trying to play from the current save and see what happens. I predict that a) Rome will run all over your Russian cities, b) China will DOW within 10 turns and take all of your Indian cities from you, c) you'll go down in flames because neither of them will stop until they have all of your cities. Further, since this is immortal the AI gets a huge discount on unit costs, so while his cities may seem to be production-poor from the human players point of view, the AI can build a lot more units than you think. And he has 4 cities bordering Neal: 1 in Tibet, 1 in northern Laos, and 2 in central asia north of Pasargadae.

Neal is suffering the consequences of 1) his DOW on China earlier to gain Chengdu, a city that has been utterly useless, 2) the broken vassal mechanics of BTS (which puts you at war with an AI when your victim vassals to them). This is an important lesson to learn: when at war post-feudalism, as soon as your victim is willing to capitulate you need to think very carefully about pursuing the war further, due to the potential to suddenly be at war with a much stronger opponent via your victim vassaling to them. If you don't want to take on a vassal, it may be better to take peace at that point (even though they may vassal to another civ anyway, but at least you won't be thrown into a war that you don't want).

I decided to play from Neal's 650BC save, to see what would happen if I played the diplomacy a little different. I've played to 1420AD, and Rome is down to it's last city, but even there I got sucked into war with China when Rome vassaled to them after I forgot to check his cap status on 1 turn. Still, that turned out OK, as I put a major dent into Qin's army.

Details:

Spoiler :

After currency I went math, contruction, HBR, MC. Rome DOWed Korea, so I waited until a lot of his units were off east and I DOWed Greece, taking all of his cities. I popped a GSpy from Thebes (GW), and infiltrated him into Rome. When Caesar went for machinery, I went for CS and stole machinery from him. I turned down the slider, upgraded units, and DOWed him, taking Rome fairly early on. It was a long and drawn out war, because he had a TON of cities in N Russia and scandinavia, but I built units like mad everywhere and wore him down. He dragged Qin in, who briefly took Pasargadae, but I quickly got it back and took peace with him. After CS I went paper, education, gunpowder, chemistry, and took steel from lib. I also stole feudalism, aesthetics, and guilds from Rome. Currently I've got rifling (no one else does) and I'm heading for steam, econ, corp, AL. I'm making money at 70%. I got a 3rd GSpy (used the 2nd for a GA), and infiltrated him into China. I took peace with Qin after blasting apart his huge stack of knights/maces/xbows/wellies with a big stack of barrage cannon.

EDIT: I almost forgot - I settled 4 more cities in Russia, and didn't settle any in africa. This helped block off Rome, although they were already REXing like crazy up there. At least I forced him to take a bunch of tundra cities.

 

[Fetch]

I think we need a plan from you, Neal. How do you plan to win this war with Julius? Give us your thoughts, and we'll tell you if they're any good or not.

 

[Neal]

An extremely short round, but, well, an important one.

I began by making whatever (nonmilitary) trades I still could with the Chinese bloc, so as to fill the coffers to fund some emergency unit upgrades:

I also switched research to Horseback Riding so as to be able to field Knights. As you can see, we also bought Pericles' map, which I'll lay out at round's end.

Seeing our newfound interest in the ways of the Horse, the game tasked me with the building of Stables across all of Asia:

A fine challenge, and an appropriate one for the Persian empire. Unfortunately, right now we have more pressing needs to worry about. Rome was mobilizing, and, according to my advisors, China was, too. Basically, everything from Babylon westward funneled units into Odessa, while all units east of Persepolis trekked towards Chengdu. Palestine and Russia trained Pikemen to fend off Rome's powerful Knights, while Persia and India focused on versatile Longbows. I have no idea what China will send against us.

Our Great General headed to Persepolis, the military nexus of Persia, to train troops:

I still think we're early enough that that'll do more good than a single Hero unit on either front.

With the Roman army setting up fortifications in the woods outside Odessa, an emissary of Caesar's came with an ultimatum:

Were Notre Dame not built there, I would consider it. As things stood, I chose instead to allow the buildup to continue.

And continue it did, up until 930 A.D. Here I had finished Education, and had a research decision to make:

Caesar is also willing to accept Education in exchange for peace. If I grant it to him, we are basically conceding the Liberalism race. But, honestly, right now, we might be better off doing just that.

Here's a look at the siege of Odessa:

I think we can hold out for a fair bit longer (Thank the Gods Caesar didn't bring more siege!), but if we're just going to buckle anyway, we may as well do it sooner rather than later.

Farther south, Rome's Catapults and Trebuchets are languishing, basically unescorted, in ancient Sumeria:

A couple of Macemen are on that little Mediterranean fleet. Maybe I should swing the Eridu garrison south to toss their salad a little bit.

And what of China? Well, war appears to be coming:

And an experimental press of the "Next turn" button confirms it. China has an awful lot of siege in its stack. I don't know how long we'll be able to hold out. Most of those Macemen are City Raider veterans from the Indian campaign, though, so maybe we hold out until the walls fall, then go for the retreat-and-retake maneuver? Or are we just screwed?

Here's a look at the Diplomacy screen:

With China's declaration will come every single nation on that map that we're not already at war with (well, except for Tokugawa, but who's counting him?). Maybe we should take peace with Rome so that we can swing those Odessa and Eridu stacks westward to try for Greece! We do have a spare Great Prophet lounging around in Thebes, in case the Jewish shrine hasn't been built...

Techwise, this is our last turn to make a trade with Qin and his cronies:

Maybe we should send Education Pericles' way to try to nab a handful of techs. If we're gonna give up on Liberalism, we may as well take what we can get, no?

Here's a look at the Power Graph:

We're still behind, but not as markedly as before. A couple of turns' worth of unit pumping will do that, I guess.

Finally, here's a long-awaited look at that map:

It looks like China is even more of a long-term threat than Rome is! With Wang Kon being expelled to the Philippines, China's major check has been removed and he's free to become a monster, without even Genghis Khan to curb him! Hopefully the Battle of Chengdu goes well for us, or we could be looking at a restart...

So what should be our tech goal? What should be our strategy against China? What should we do about Rome? Should we just spare ourselves the heartache and start over? I'm getting a little verklempt just thinking about it. Talk amongst yourselves.

 

[Ultimocrat]

Not a hopeless situation by any means.

Too bad you don't have any mounted units in the east to flank Qin's seige -- it's a huge stack but has no mounted-unit counters (maybe whip a knight or two somewhere in india?). Chendgu is a death trap for whoever is holding it, with both of you having strong city raider stacks, and the city bordering a jungle hill. I would move all of the city's defenders out to the jungle hill north of the city. Maybe Qin will suicide against your +100% defenses (jungle hill, river crossing), and you'll escape unscathed. If he takes the city, you can attack back with your city raider maces, destroying his stack.

In the west, the battle of odessa looks winnnable -- though you have no means of counterattacking, a big enough defensive mixed stack shouldn't be beatable without seige support, and the longer the fight goes on, the greater your advantage should be -- you have more production, Caesar will suffer war weariness, and you will be able to promote your surviving units up the CG line, while most of his stack can only combat-promote. Make sure you kill off the seige stack in the south before they get defensive support.

 

[Kev]

Not the best player, so take my thoughts in that light until the better players reply.

If I'm not mistaken, JC declared war on you because you were at war with Inida who capitulated to him. For this reason, I don't think JC or his other vassals have many negative diplo hits on you and you should be able to get back to pretty decent graces quickly once you make peace.

I would give up education to get that peace. I don't think you're headed for the liberalism bonus in any case as you still don't have philosophy and with India having education there's a good chance JC will end up with it quickly anyway.

Given that, get what you can for it now. Perhaps even Boudica will give you gunpowder if she's willing to trade post-war.

I'd go for peace there and shift a great deal of your military then toward China. Absorb what you can, and then even go on the offense and see if you can set them back some. Or you can take your Odessa garrison and take the two main cities off of Peri before moving them (the Jewish Holy City would be nice). Better for peace and then focus on one bloc than taking on the world right now.

No need for any restart even if you lose a city or two. It's nice to see a challenge!

 

[mystyfly]

Beg 5g from Qin to buy you some time.

 

[UWHabs]

You can't fight everyone. At this point, don't bother with the Liberalism battle. You're in for all-out war now.

Tech either gunpowder or Theology (for theocracy). Qin has a big stack, but they are all lower strength units. If you could just get a bunch of knights there, then you might have been able to flank all their siege away. And without guilds or engineering, Qin has nothing that could beat your knights. Whip them out ASAP in your Indian lands and you might be able to defeat him. Not having cleared away the jungle around Chengdu will make it more challenging. Just on hills, you could have creamed them, since they're all backwards units. But on a jungle hill, it won't be so easy.

Wipe out Ceasar's lonely siege units around Eridu, then make peace. Spread education around. I'd probably tech theology-gunpowder (or grab one from a trade). You're probably going to be building units and fighting wars for a long while, but you're in decent tech shape, and have land. You just have to work it to its max.

 

[r_rolo1]

Some very quick regards ( as you already spoiled next turn yourself )

-Ceasar will acept pretty much anything more valuable than the world map in top of the peace treaty ( I tested Education and Moscow, both worked ). You don't have to give Odessa now... and if you kill some more units, you probaly have a fair peace deal soon.

-Chengdu will hold. Especially if you whip a Castle in top of that wall you're making now. As you are aware, the chinese army will group on the other side of the river and that gives you a huge advantage.

Spoiler :

I playtested this for 3 turns until the first chinese attack aftermath. wall->castle ( whipped ASAP ). Xerxes lost may 2 units of the garrison because QSH was restless and decided to make a direct attack to the fortress after taking maybe 1/4 of the defensive bonuses

-The AP is in Utica. I think that you should put taking it high in your priority list... if you control it ( you can definitely control it alone if you put some effort in it ) it can save you from the diplo mess you are.
-Maybe you should think in switching to mercantilism as soon as you get Banking. You pissed way too many people

P.S QSH will oblige with a 10 g tribute. Stupid AI

 

[micbic]

Crazy plan 1: Withdraw all your units from Chengdu and built a counter-attacking force, while pumping defenders in Viyajangara. Asoka should be pacified as the last possible thing would be an Indian stack. Try to persuade Toku to join the war vs Qin. He may redirect some forces.
Crazy plan 2: Ask Qin to stop trading with Asoka, so that the OB agreement is removed, and then block Qin's stack signing peace with Asoka and gifting him Chengdu. Buy time.
Qin is more of a threat than Caesar seems. No peace since holding off looks possible.

 

[Ultimocrat]

Also, something I just noticed -- Caesar teching Chemistry in 7 turns? Him running away with the tech lead may be your biggest long-term problem. I guess you should surge back once the cities on the Indian subcontinent get online, but you've got a lot of marginal land cutting into your economy. What do charts for GNP and production look like?

 

[r_rolo1]

I think can hold the 2 wars for a while, but he definitely will have issues trying to maintaing a war across the Eurasia without railroads.... So you probably need to get peace or a delay in one of the fronts.

I'm worried with that stack near Uruk.... taking units of Turkey may be a risky business.....

 

[Gooblah]

1) JC is willing to take Education for peace. Do it.
2) Start withdrawing troops from Odessa, and land them north. Take some crap cities from Qin and sue for peace.
3) I'm sure that JC views Qin as a threat. It may be a longshot, but try to get some leverage.

 

[IAM]

Tech to theocracy and or gunpowder.

I think the liberalism race is a back issue at this point so get what you can for education.

I feel much better about the war situation now than after last turn. You have some good unit cohesion and can bet back both stacks likely. The problem I see is if you get into such a large world war your enemies are not as likely to look for a peace treaty. On the other hand I wouldn't let Rome off. Those seige units need to be eliminated and the other Roman stacks broke down as well.

I'd hold in the east against Qin. Let him smah those units on your city walls. Rome has more advanced units and needs to learn who the King of the World really is!

Other issues about the AP, Jewish Holy Shrine, etc. will be in better perspective once we have a better hold on what's left after this first strike of the SOD's from JC and Qin. I say fight them to a better peace.

 

[JammerUno]

Another option is striking at Qin's stack before he declares. There's only one macemen in that stack, and once he's down, the rest is useless in the field against your troops. You'll take out a decent number of cats when attacking as well, giving your LBs a chance to cover the retreat of your attacking xbows and maces.

As far as JC's concerned, get peace ASAP and try to get friendly while you deal with Qin. Once Qin's down, you can deal with him.

 

[r_rolo1]

It will be hard to work with JC after the war, because Neal became his worst enemy ( and this does not include the war diplo modifiers ) ..... it would be needed a lot of greasing to get out of there, and probably it isn't worth the trouble. To add, JC and QSH are Friendly with eachother, so I would not expect that JC acts against QSH for quite a while ( JC is pleased with Pericles and Annoyed with Hannibal, that isn't enough to lower the real attitude of JC to a decent cautious ).

My point is that since the moment you failed to cap asoka you entered in a total war state until both QSH and JC are down because they will not fight eachother. So, you need to hold one while smashing the other. Do you prefer to smash Rome while holding China or smash China while you hold Rome? That is the 1.000.000 € question in here.....

 

[huerfanista]

Interesting turn of events - when I tried playing from your save earlier neither Rome nor China would talk to me. I'm not sure what you gain by waiting for Rome to lower your defenses in Odessa, though (that's a pretty small defensive stack there), so I'd give him education for peace and consider myself lucky. He is running away in tech, though, and has a lot of cities. I think the best long term plan would be to try to set him against China, but you don't have anything to trade.

As far as China is concerned, I'd go for the beg to gain 10 turns - time to whip some knights to flank his seige. You have a nice defensive stack there, so you could either weather the storm (as Rolo indicated), or let him take the city and then wipe out his stack with your CR maces and seige. Can you get enough workers there to build a fort on one of those jungle hills in 10 turns? He might just suicide his troops against that. I'm amazed that he doesn't have any cho-ko-nus in that stack - China usually builds them by the ton and they are very hard to handle. He's defecit researching guilds, so there's no telling how far away from them he is. If you can take out his stack quickly and counterattack (unfortunately, you're very light on seige), you will definitely get peace and may weaken him some. If you can hold in SE asia and counterattack thru N asia you might catch him napping. But that depends on peace with Rome.

Don't give up hope! You're in a much better position than I imagined. Tech path from here on will be crucial, as Rome is a monster.

EDIT:

It will be hard to work with JC after the war, because Neal became his worst enemy ( and this does not include the war diplo modifiers ) ..... it would be needed a lot of greasing to get out of there, and probably it isn't worth the trouble. To add, JC and QSH are Friendly with eachother, so I would not expect that JC acts against QSH for quite a while ( JC is pleased with Pericles and Annoyed with Hannibal, that isn't enough to lower the real attitude of JC to a decent cautious ).

My point is that since the moment you failed to cap asoka you entered in a total war state until both QSH and JC are down because they will not fight eachother. So, you need to hold one while smashing the other. Do you prefer to smash Rome while holding China or smash China while you hold Rome? That is the 1.000.000 € question in here.....

Well, you sure paint a bleak picture. And I'm not sure you're wrong, either. So JC goes from pleased with Neal to worst enemy in 1 turn simply by vassaling Ashoka! That's just wrong. There's so much wrong with the vassal mechanics in BTS that I don't even know where to begin. Neal, you don't still have a save from when Ashoka was willing to cap, do you?

 

[r_rolo1]

QSH has 1 or 2 CHK in a secondary stack north of the one Neal shows in the pic. Those have a assured lock on maces if the lbows are collatered ( sic ) enough to not be best defenders.....

P.S The vassal mechanics are really borked in this kind of situations. For game proposes, it was Neal that declared war to Rome when Rome vassaled India. That is enough to make neal the worst enemy of Rome, even without considering the "war spoils relations" stuff

 

[huerfanista]

re: the borked vassal mechanics -
I think you should get a popup saying "Civ x has vassaled to civ y - do you wish to declare war on civ Y?" If you say yes, then it's essentially the same situation you have now. If you say no, your units are kicked out and you have peace. Any thoughts?

 

[r_rolo1]

I and countless others already suggested that since Warlords 2.00....

 

[pigswill]

Maybe give Jules education for peace. At some point you'll have to confront Jules but it makes sense to weaken Qin before you do so. The cheesy 'move troops out and then annihilate stack in city' trick is probably worth employing in this situation. Western army may be able to vassalise or annihilate Pericles which would sour relations between Jules and Qin.